Textiles comprising optical fibres are known and have been developed in the past, for example using knitting techniques. Such textiles have been described particularly in patent applications U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,928, U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,323, GB 2,305,848 and WO 02/12785.
These known textiles contain optical fibres which may be illuminated by one of their ends, which acts as an input section, in order to render the corresponding piece of fabric luminous. In these luminous textiles the optical fibres constitute the weft and/or warp and may be combined with standard fibres, for example cotton, linen, silk or synthetic textile fibres.
The optical-fibre based luminous fabrics hitherto developed have never been produced industrially since it is only possible to connect a given number of fibres, for example five hundred, to a light source, for example a LED.
It is therefore necessary to count the optical fibres at intervals on the edges of the fabric before bringing them together and connecting their ends, known as “input ends”, to a light source.
This applies particularly if the light sources connected to groups—or bundles—of different optical fibres are of a different type, for example of a different power or color.
Until now, no method for weaving optical fibres has offered an industrial solution for separating and identifying independent bundles of optical fibres in fabric and/or of separating and identifying bundles of optical fibres relative to textile threads constituting the base of the fabric.
Up until this point in time, it has been necessary to separate and regroup the input ends of the various fibres of a bundle manually, which is a long, tedious operation that is clearly incompatible with the production of quantities on an industrial scale.